Cutting cables: the war being waged under the sea

"Hybrid warfare." It's a term that's bandied around with increasing regularity of late, said Pierre Haski on France Inter (Paris) – and for good reason. In the past two years, we've seen explosions destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia and Germany, a gas pipeline and two data cables cut by the anchor of a Chinese ship in the Gulf of Finland, and a whole series of what look likely to have been sabotage attacks in Germany, the UK and other countries.

But last week, we saw what appears to be a "particularly worrying" example of this new type of warfare: two undersea communications cables were cut within a few hours of each other in the Baltic Sea, one an internet link from Lithuania to Sweden, the other a telecommunications line linking Finland and Germany. It's just possible these cables were damaged accidentally by, say, a ship dragging its anchor. "But two cables cut within a few hours of each other leave little doubt" – and EU leaders were quick to blame "malicious actors", whom they allege are seeking new ways to undermine Western security.

The reason this is so alarming, said Jason Power on RTÉ (Dublin), is that undersea cables are "the backbone of global internet and communication systems". These fibre optic lines, typically between 0.8 and 1.2 inches thick and laid by slow-moving ships across thousands of miles of ocean, carry 99% of intercontinental internet traffic. Their capacity to "send data incredible distances almost instantly" makes them vital to almost all aspects of modern life – sending emails, conducting video calls, making card payments, watching videos online and so on. By disrupting the flow of data along them, hostile powers can "cripple" communication and commerce, creating chaos without having to resort to a direct military attack.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The cases in the Baltic haven't had an impact on that scale, said Fritz Espenlaub in BR24 (Ahaus): "both Finland and Sweden have numerous alternative data connections", so are well placed to deal with the failure of individual cables. What is worrying, though, is the increasing frequency with which cables in the area seem to be targeted – and the inability of Western governments to do much to stop it happening.

So who was behind the alleged Baltic sabotage? It might well have been Russia, said Anatol Lieven on UnHerd: the cutting of the cables coincided with the US authorising Ukraine to use long-range missiles deep inside Russian territory, and Vladimir Putin may have wanted to send a warning to Kyiv's allies in the West. But the more likely culprit appears to be a Chinese merchant ship, said Elisabeth Braw in Foreign Policy (Washington). Within hours of the second cable, the C-Lion1, being cut, the Chinese-flagged bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 had been identified as being of interest to authorities. It had left the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on 15 November, two days before the first cable was cut. As it sailed towards the Atlantic it was followed by the Danish navy; it's now thought to have been detained by Danish officials. But Beijing denies any involvement, and since acts of sabotage by non-military ships are outside the remit of the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, Denmark has few clear options for how to proceed.

Nato and the EU have been discussing how better to protect undersea cables for years, said Falk Steiner in Deutschlandfunk (Berlin), as current measures are clearly inadequate. But there are no easy fixes, said Oliver Klein and Scarlett Sternberg in ZDF Heute (Mainz). Oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, and only 5% of them have been precisely mapped – so the big tech and telecom companies are laying cables deep underwater in uncharted territory, where law enforcement agencies lack the resources to monitor them.

Nato is at least trying to plug that gap, said Braw: in May, it held the first meeting of a new "Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network". But "the next time that saboteurs arrive – and they will – Nato's navies will face the same painful question" about how to respond. These vast networks of cables and pipelines were "products of our harmonious globalised age. Now they're the new front line."